Speaking on his Lou Dobbs Tonight show, the rightwing commentator became the latest Fox host to slam Hollywood's perceived liberal agenda. In December, Dobbs's colleague Eric Bolling revealed the secret communist subtext of the new Muppets movie, which shamelessly denigrates the well-off by featuring a greedy oil executive named Tex Richman as its villain.

"Now a story you won't hear anywhere in the liberal national media," began Dobbs. "Hollywood is once again trying to indoctrinate our children. Two new films out this year plainly with an agenda, plainly demonising the so-called 1% and espousing the virtue of green energy policies come what may."

Borrower, not lender ... a still from Studio Ghibli's Arrietty PR

After screening scenes from the offending films, Dobbs then compared them to speeches by Barack Obama in which the US president said that all Americans should pay their fair share of tax. "The president's liberal friends in Hollywood using animated movies to sell their agenda … to children," he offered.

While The Lorax is a US production based on a famous American children's story, The Secret World of Arrietty seems an unusual choice for Bolling's ire, because its links to the Hollywood liberal conspiracy appear to be slim. Studio Ghibli is a Japanese company and the original Borrowers books are by the late British author Mary Norton. Dobbs's attack appears to mark the first occasion upon which her stories about tiny people who "borrow" household items from unwitting humans have been read allegorically as a socialist polemic espousing redistribution of wealth.

The Secret World of Arrietty was out in UK cinemas in July (named simply, Arrietty) but arrived in the US only last week. Dr Seuss' The Lorax is released on 2 March in the US and 27 July in the UK.